


Distance Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

by FaiaHae



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast), The Adventure Zone: Amnesty (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Long-Distance Relationship, Love Letters, M/M, Moschicane Week, Mutual Pining, Other ships may come in depending on how long this gets, Pre-Canon, To systematically dismantle the fuckery of the current arc i'm starting years before canon, Travel, World Travel, letter writing, or at least it started that way
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-05-12 00:50:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19218253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FaiaHae/pseuds/FaiaHae
Summary: Boyd and Ned have been partners a long time. They've been....partners. For quite a bit less. So when Boyd goes home to England after the heist at the Little estate goes right (and then wrong- the house caught fire as they drove away and Ned doesn't know WHY-) Ned thinks for sure that it's over.He's....pleasantly surprised that he's wrong.





	Distance Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

Ned spent the first 5 hours after Boyd left in the airport parking lot, looking up at the ceiling. 

 

It was fine, he tried to tell himself. 

 

The heist at the Little estate had gone off without a hitch, up until they were driving away and the first firelight came in through the back window.

 

They were long gone before the sirens started.

 

It was fine.

 

It wasn’t their fault.

 

Still, Ned wasn’t surprised when Boyd wanted to skip town, alone. And sure, he said he just needed to go home and visit his family, but Ned didn’t really buy that. Lots of people left. Usually people didn’t come back. 

 

__

 

Boyd started to miss Ned right around the exact minute he was out of sight.

 

He tried to ignore it- at first- it was just a tiny little gnaw in his chest and it wasn’t hard to distract from- he blamed it on the fake ID in his pocket and the memory of firelight out the back window of the car as they drove away.

 

He’d left most of the stuff with Ned.

 

He’d come back for it.

 

Wouldn’t he?   
  


___

 

Ned thought he’d made a rather dramatic succession of mistakes.

 

He had no one to blame the car crash on- well, maybe Boyd could have done a better job changing out the plates, someone must have seen the car in the fucking neighborhood. He’d made it out into the middle of the woods, and crashed the fucking car, stuffed whatever he could fit in his pockets and grabbed his go-bag (he shouldn’t have kept the phone why was he keeping the phone who did he think was going to call-) and a card with a hastily scribbled address and got the fuck away.

 

He broke into some broken-down looking museum, got a greeting in the form of the business end of a shotgun, and decided to call it home.

 

Boyd didn’t call.

 

____

 

Falling in a fucking fountain was NOT how Boyd wanted to greet his home country for the first time in a decade.

 

The phone was toast, at least the rest of the fragile stuff had been in a checked bag. He considered trying to restore it, but he really couldn’t take the risk of taking it in to get repaired, and it was a burner- Ned had probably tossed his already, and Ned was the only person he was interested in calling.

 

Long distance calling was expensive anyway. Too much attention.

 

He tried to ignore how hard it was to drop the phone in the trash. 

 

His day went well, once he got past the quiet. He was too used to always being able to turn around and say something pithy or have his thoughts derailed by some random bit of outrageous trivia or a spare phrase in Italian with a meaning he wouldn’t decode til he and Ned were in bed together. It felt odd, to be quiet.

 

Not that he was alone- he showed up on Bonnie’s doorstep and was greeted with the most impressive bout of swearing he’d ever heard. She must have been hanging out with  _ sailors.  _ But she’d dragged him over the front step and it was like he’d never left- only it was easier, without their parents hanging over them. Bettie came blazing in a within the hour- and they went back and forth interrogating him (he’d missed his sisters. He’d missed them so much). 

 

He’d started the conversation with absolutely no inclination to talk about Ned, but within a couple of hours (and okay, maybe a few drinks) he was laying out on his couch with his legs across Bonnie’s lap, a beer in his hand, gesturing wildly. 

 

“-nd then he turns to me and he says ‘act natural’ and that’s all the warning I get before he throws his arms around me and kisses me like we’re on the titanic and everyone’s going to die.”

 

“Oh my god.” Bonnie snorts.

 

“So did you guys get together after that? Even if it was a cover that was kind of obvious.” Bettie chimed in.

 

“Nope!” Boyd took another drink. “We did that on at least 3 more jobs before I got the idea that maybe I wasn’t just a good cover.”

 

“You  _ idiot. _ ”

 

“He makes-” Boyd remembered the phone, and the distance, and put his drink down. “He made me stupid.”

 

He didn’t see it, but he could  _ feel  _ the look Bonnie and Bettie exchanged. 

 

“Did you leave him with a way to call?”

 

“He can’t call. But I gave him the address.”

 

“This one?” 

 

“Yeah.”

 

Bettie smiled, reaching over to tousle Boyd’s hair and laughing as he batted her off.

 

“Give it a week. He’ll write.”

 

___

 

Ned lasted two days before he pulled out the card with the address on it. He ignored the vaguely smug look Victoria shot him, up until he realized he had to ask her for postage. 

 

She gave it to him, as well as a pink envelope and a valentines day card, and he thought they were going to get along just fine, even as he scowled at her. 

 

He wrote the card.

 

He threw it out and went to ask for another one.

 

After repeating this process a few times, Victoria sat down next to him without further comment, handed him a nice piece of stationary and a pen fancier then any he’d ever seen, and raised an eyebrow.

 

“Maybe try it without the bullshit this time.”

 

He wrote the letter.

 

She took it out of his hand and put it in the envelope before he could chicken out- plucking the address card out from between his fingers.

 

“Come on. We need to get an international mail envelope, and you need to get something else to put in the box.”

 

“Who says it’s going to be a box? It’s a courtesy letter.”

 

Victoria gave him an unimpressed look.

 

“I speak Italian, and even if he doesn’t, writing it down means he’s going to be able to look it up. You ain’t slick.”

 

“Fuck.”

 

“Come on. Lets get your man a postcard.”

 

___

 

Small mercies, Bettie didn’t  _ actually  _ manage to read the letter before Boyd did. Mostly because she was too busy pouring over the rest of the contents of the box, but Boyd was going to ignore that for the sake of his own sanity. 

 

It wasn’t long, about half of it was in Italian, but it was....affectionate. Warm, in the ribbing way Ned got sometimes when he was trying not to say something soft. But he still managed to be startled by the end.

 

_ I miss you, old friend. -Ned _

 

“Oh my god, Boyd. Look at all of this shit.”

 

Boyd looked up.

 

The table was positively  _ covered  _ with tourist advertisements. Flyers, informational packets, maps. Somewhere called Kepler, West Virginia. “Slide on into Kepler” proclaimed one, a glossy picture of a waterpark on its cover. There was Ned’s tiny, pinprick writing in the corner. It read  _ “why the fuck would you name a water park the slurp and squirt.” _

 

The more he looked, the more he saw that  _ all  _ of the papers and advertisements and postcards have writing on them. Most of it sarcastic, but Bonnie’s holding a flyer and grinning.

 

“ _ You’d love this ski resort _ .” She sing-songs. “ _ Richest, stupidest motherfuckers with deep pockets and no sense of self preservation. Wish you were here _ ! Is this how you two always flirt?”

 

“We don’t flirt.”

 

“Uh-huh.”

 

“We  _ don’t. _ ”

 

Bettie plucks the letter out of his hand, wheezes, and hands it back.

 

“Well, that was more than I ever needed to know about your sex life.”

 

“What?”

 

Bettie gives him a strange look.

 

“The Italian?”

 

“I don’t speak Italian.”   
  


“You don’t speak- Oh for fuck’s sake. I’m not translating that for you. My sanity couldn’t bear it. Get a dictionary.”

 

Boyd got a dictionary.

 

____

 

Boyd’s letter arrived with a box that Ned made the mistake of opening in front of Victoria, who, to her credit, seemed nonplussed. 

 

And after he’d put the box  _ away _ , fighting down a grin the whole time, he took a little bit longer to read the letter. 

 

It was hardly poetic- most of it was Boyd complaining about his sister’s nosiness, the traffic in London, the weather, the closure of his favorite pasty shop, the price of coffee. But there were little things mixed in-  _ if you were on the tube with me I’d have to carry you to keep from missing the train, you’d love the view from Bettie’s apartment, my sisters already love you. _

 

Ned flopped over backwards on his bed, holding the letter to his chest and trying to pretend his pounding heart was from moving around boxes, but he couldn’t keep the smile down.

 

_ P.S- I miss you.  _


End file.
